2026 Georgia Association for Healthcare Facility Managers (GAHFM) Annual Conference-Rethinking Facility Upgrades in Healthcare

Rethinking Facility Upgrades in Healthcare

Pdf Summary

This presentation argues that healthcare facilities need a smarter approach to aging infrastructure, especially HVAC and controls systems. With many U.S. hospitals over 30 years old, deferred maintenance is driving higher costs, more downtime, compliance risks, and reduced reliability. At the same time, hospitals face financial strain, staffing shortages, and growing pressure to improve patient care, energy performance, and resilience.<br /><br />The speakers distinguish between two strategies: in-place retrofits/refreshes and full replacements. In-place refreshes are meant for high-value assets that still have usable life, such as chillers, cooling towers, air handlers, and terminal units. These upgrades can restore performance, improve efficiency, extend asset life, and reduce disruption without requiring complete replacement. Examples include replacing worn components, modernizing controls, improving redundancy, and restoring cabinets, coils, fan assemblies, and valves.<br /><br />Full replacements are recommended when equipment is beyond useful life, unreliable, or too inefficient to justify continued repair. Replacements can increase redundancy, improve indoor air quality, reduce downtime, and support future capacity needs. Controls and building automation upgrades also play a key role by improving visibility, diagnostics, alarm management, and integration across systems.<br /><br />The presentation emphasizes a structured process: assess equipment condition, failure history, patient-care impact, compliance concerns, and remaining useful life; plan phased work carefully; and validate results through reduced downtime, lower costs, energy savings, and improved comfort.<br /><br />To justify investments, the presenters highlight the financial impact of failures in critical spaces, such as canceled surgeries and lost imaging revenue. They also discuss funding options, rebates, tax incentives, utility programs, and healthcare group purchasing organizations to help make projects feasible.

Keywords

healthcare facilities

aging infrastructure

HVAC systems

controls systems

deferred maintenance

in-place retrofits

full replacements

building automation

energy efficiency

hospital resilience